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Time Warner Cable DNS Under DDoS Attack
Apparently there's some disgruntled zombies out there...
by Karl Bode Thursday 26-Feb-2009 tags: business · cable · trouble · networking · Time Warner Cable
Tipped by sortofageek See Profile
For much of the week, Roadrunner/Time Warner Cable customers in Southern California have been complaining about sluggish DNS performance in our forums. Time Warner Cable spokesman Jeff Simmermon (who you can follow on Twitter) has subsequently confirmed that the company's DNS servers in the region have been under DDoS attack for seven days now, impacting service for both customers in California and elsewhere. "These attacks are not uncommon, especially for a network as large as ours," says the company in a statement, though they admit "this particular series of attacks has been larger and more difficult to contain than similar attacks in the past." Of course switching to OpenDNS temporarily (or permanently, if you like their service) should help users.

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Open_DNS

@rr.com

Ah...OK

So that's why my OpenDNS slowed down so much a lot during the week. A lot of TWC people (I'm one of them) were moving over to OpenDNS instead of using their default from TWC. That makes sense now.

Hazy Arc

join:2006-04-10
Greenwood, SC

OpenDNS

quote:
Of course switching to OpenDNS temporarily (or permanently, if you like their service) should help users.
In this day and age, it is foolish to use your ISP's DNS servers.
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:4
Reviews:
·SONIC.NET
·Pacific Bell - SBC

Re: OpenDNS

said by Hazy Arc:

In this day and age, it is foolish to use your ISP's DNS servers.
They work for me:
C:\utils\ns_bench>ns_bench 68.94.156.1 68.94.157.1 208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220
 4.2.2.1 4.2.2.3
Nameserver              Response Time (ms)
                        min/avg/max/stdev/retries
 
68.94.156.1             12.17/12.62/13.38/0.44/0
68.94.157.1             12.32/14.32/21.39/3.54/0
208.67.222.222          14.05/14.69/16.05/0.71/0
208.67.220.220          13.89/14.08/14.27/0.15/0
4.2.2.1                 14.60/15.20/15.59/0.43/0
4.2.2.3                 13.89/14.51/15.15/0.53/0
 
First pair are ATTIS, which are assigned to my connection by 'at&t Yahoo! HSI'.

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

SLD
Premium
join:2002-04-17
San Francisco, CA
Just like using your ISPs email service.
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:4

Re: OpenDNS

Not quite.

maartena
Elmo
Premium
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA
kudos:1

Re: OpenDNS

Until they get bought out, or you move outside of their territory, after which you get to update your family and friends with a new email address.

ISP-independent email ftw
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:4
Reviews:
·SONIC.NET
·Pacific Bell - SBC

1 edit

Re: OpenDNS

The comment was about using another DNS provider be the same as using another email provider. It is not quite the same thing, no matter how you cut, slice, or dice it.

Whether you use your ISP's DNS, or not, is more a matter of whether your ISP's DNS servers are doing the job, or not. If their DNS is broken, you will have trouble accessing the Internet.

Whether you use your ISP's email, or not, is a matter of personal convenience (unless the ISP email is as broken as the ISP DNS).

Neither my ISP DNS servers, nor my ISP email give me any grief (I've had more grief from third party email service providers than my ISP email).

I use my ISP's DNS servers because they work as well as any other DNS servers.

I don't use my ISP's email because it is inconvenient to be tied to them by the email domain.

So my assessment stand: "Not quite the same".

P.S. My ISP (Pacific Bell) was bought! My ISP email address is still <%User_ID%@pacbell.net>. Road Runner did not do as Comcast did in their respective Adephia buyouts (former Adelphia users with the same User_ID as Comcast users, had to sign up an email address with a new User_ID name, not just a new domain. Not so with Road Runner).

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

Mactron
el Camino Real
Premium
join:2001-12-16
CM94sv
Yup your ISP is just a big Dumb pipe. No matter what they think they are.
Open DNS and Gmail here.
--
If only the Verizon CSRs worked this well.
bac522

join:2003-08-04
Manchester, NH

1 edit
Yeah...you can use gmail instead which never has problems either ...oh wait I guess the 4 hours of downtime gmail had this week doesn't matter! Stupid responses...service providers are just as capable or not as capable of providing services as those who worship companies like google! Everyone can has downtime at one time or another!
zed260
Premium
join:2007-09-30
Cleveland, TN
kudos:1

persoanly

i use 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 as my dns best dns i know of
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:4
Reviews:
·SONIC.NET
·Pacific Bell - SBC

Re: persoanly

4.2.2.2 has not worked for me for a couple of weeks, now:
C:\utils\ns_bench>ns_bench 68.94.156.1 68.94.157.1 208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220
 4.2.2.1 4.2.2.2
Nameserver              Response Time (ms)
                        min/avg/max/stdev/retries
 
68.94.156.1             11.94/14.03/18.49/2.37/0
68.94.157.1             11.90/12.49/13.23/0.47/0
208.67.222.222          13.94/14.34/15.17/0.45/0
208.67.220.220          13.47/13.93/14.53/0.35/0
4.2.2.1                 13.69/14.24/15.02/0.46/0
4.2.2.2                 failed
 

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

battleop

join:2005-09-28
00000

Re: persoanly

4.2.2.2 still works. There may be a problem else where.

battleop@toybox4:~$ nslookup
> server 4.2.2.2
Default server: 4.2.2.2
Address: 4.2.2.2#53
> google.com
Server: 4.2.2.2
Address: 4.2.2.2#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: google.com
Address: 209.85.171.100
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.45.100
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.67.100
> dslreports.com
Server: 4.2.2.2
Address: 4.2.2.2#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: dslreports.com
Address: 209.123.109.175
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:4
Reviews:
·SONIC.NET
·Pacific Bell - SBC

Re: persoanly

said by battleop:

4.2.2.2 still works. There may be a problem else where.
Maybe an ACL, or just some local Level 3 issue. Their DNS servers, and they use "Anycast" on their DNS servers.

Not really a problem for me, just an observation. All three DNS providers, ATTIS (my ISP), OpenDNS, and Level 3 are using "Anycast", and all three ping within 12 ms of my location. The 'ns_bench' test generally shows a slight edge to the ATTIS DNS servers, so I only use the others for experimenting.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum
iansltx

join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2
4.2.2.1-6 have all worked at least for me, and due to location they're much faster thn OpenDNS. Especially 4.2.2.4-6; ping 'em and I get 12ms most of the time.
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:4

Re: persoanly

Did OpenDNS deploy a new DNS server cluster closer to Texas than Chicago, Illinois?
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum
Rob_
Premium
join:2008-07-16
Mary Esther, FL

Open DNS = EVIL

try using something that doesn't redirect your pages to their oops, i fucked up on the spelling site..

such as 4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3 (level 3 DNS)

(NOTE: you shouldn't have to opt out of open dns's plans to redirect you, it should be off by default, not everyone comes to this site and learns)

-Rob
--
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NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:4
Reviews:
·SONIC.NET
·Pacific Bell - SBC

Re: Open DNS = EVIL

said by Rob_:

(NOTE: you shouldn't have to opt out of open dns's plans to redirect you, it should be off by default, not everyone comes to this site and learns)
The revenue model for OpenDNS requires that redirection be on by default. How would they cover the cost of operation if they didn't generate ad revenue by redirection?
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

Hazy Arc

join:2006-04-10
Greenwood, SC

Re: Open DNS = EVIL

Exactly. They even recommend that you register so that you can modify the settings for your IP address/range exactly to your liking.

rcm

join:2004-02-16
Pulaski, TN
level 3 dns for the win

4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3 have worked for me for a very long time with no hiccups
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:4
Reviews:
·SONIC.NET
·Pacific Bell - SBC

Re: Open DNS = EVIL

said by rcm:

level 3 dns for the win
Depends:
C:\utils\ns_bench>ns_bench 68.94.156.1 68.94.157.1 4.2.2.2 4.2.2.3
Nameserver              Response Time (ms)
                        min/avg/max/stdev/retries
 
68.94.156.1             11.91/12.32/12.71/0.27/0
68.94.157.1             12.49/12.76/13.18/0.24/0
4.2.2.2                 failed
4.2.2.3                 13.26/13.89/14.22/0.34/0
 
ATTIS seems to work better for me.

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

backfeed
is giving feedback

join:2002-12-16
Peru, IN
Reviews:
·Comcast
I have used level 3 also...I assume for the same reasons the address is easy to remember..but I do wonder...what does Level 3 think of all the users that bootleg there dns for free??....I wonder why they are still open.....
--
There are 10 types of people. Those who can read Binary and those who cannot.

dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
kudos:4
said by Rob_:

try using something that doesn't redirect your pages to their oops, i fucked up on the spelling site..

such as 4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3 (level 3 DNS)

(NOTE: you shouldn't have to opt out of open dns's plans to redirect you, it should be off by default, not everyone comes to this site and learns)
But theres NO MONEY IN OPT OUT by default!
--
When I gez aju zavateh na nalechoo more new yonooz tonigh molinigh - Ken Lee

pfak
Bow before me for I am root
Premium
join:2002-12-29
Vancouver, BC
Reviews:
·TELUS
·Shaw
Wow, someone that finally agrees with me about OpenDNS!

All the wonderful people here going on about how their ISP is now redirecting their search queries to a "not found" page, and saying how everyone should use OpenDNS ..

Well, OpenDNS does the same thing!
--
Xenophase - British Columbia's premier online gaming community.
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:4
Reviews:
·SONIC.NET
·Pacific Bell - SBC

Re: Open DNS = EVIL

Click for full size
OpenDNS redirection.
Click for full size
OpenDNS error.
If your ISP redirects errors, they should make it as easy to opt out as OpenDNS does; but most don't.

It is very easy to opt out of error redirection with OpenDNS. If you don't opt out, you get this:
C:\utils\ns_bench>nslookup www.xyzzyiz2krazy4me.org
Server:  resolver1.opendns.com
Address:  208.67.222.222
 
Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    www.xyzzyiz2krazy4me.org.aosake.net
Address:  208.67.216.132
 
Otherwise you get this:
C:\utils\ns_bench>nslookup www.xyzzyiz2krazy4me.org
Server:  resolver1.opendns.com
Address:  208.67.222.222
 
*** resolver1.opendns.com can't find www.xyzzyiz2krazy4me.org: Non-existent doma
in
 

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

pfak
Bow before me for I am root
Premium
join:2002-12-29
Vancouver, BC
Reviews:
·TELUS
·Shaw

Re: Open DNS = EVIL

Or, you know, I can use my ISPs DNS servers which happen not to do this OR when the time comes run my own.

No reason anyone technically inclined should be using OpenDNS.
--
Xenophase - British Columbia's premier online gaming community.
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:4
Reviews:
·SONIC.NET
·Pacific Bell - SBC

1 edit

Re: Open DNS = EVIL

said by pfak:

No reason anyone technically inclined should be using OpenDNS.
No reason not to, either; unless you just don't like them. But then, you probably shouldn't use Gmail, or Microsoft, either. Especially if you don't like them.

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

v35_pilot
Whoops, there goes another AMU
Premium
join:2005-12-12
Fayetteville, NY
Reviews:
·ViaTalk
·Verizon FiOS
said by pfak:

No reason anyone technically inclined should be using OpenDNS.
Technical inclination is irrelevant. Free parental controls and other security features make OpenDNS a valuable one-stop shopping for many, including myself.

If you have a strong objection to OpenDNS because of their revenue model, that is understandable and respectable but state it as such. Trying to disguise this objection as something based on one's technical inclination is disingenuous.
thedragonmas

join:2007-12-28
Albany, GA

dreamhost webhosting affected too!

taken from »www.dreamhoststatus.com/

quote:
Our DNS servers are currently running slowly/failing to do lookups. This is causing some of our sites to resolve slowly or not at all. Our admin team is working on the issue right now. More updates to come.

Update: We are experiencing a DNS flood to our primary DNS servers which has stopped for now but the admin team is continuing to investigate so that we can attempt to avoid and further issues related to this incident. We apologize for the inconvenience!

Update: We have found the source of the problem. It looks like there is a windows trojan going around that attempted to make contact with a domain that is pointing to our nameservers, but isn’t actually being hosted by us (was likely an old customer that removed it from hosting, but didn’t change the nameservers to point away from us). This caused the flood of traffic to come in and overwhelm our DNS servers. You can find more information about this trojan here:

»www.sophos.com/security/analyses···taa.html

Unfortunately, DNS attacks are nearly impossible to stop if they’re well crafted. In this case, all of the traffic is perfectly legitimate and there’s nothing special about the packets that any protection system could really block. We are in contact with verisign (the registrar of that domain) now to try and stop this domain from pointing to our nameservers and are doing everything we can on our end to resolve this issue.

Update: This issue should now be resolved, as we’ve been able to filter out traffic for the offending domain, and send it to the bit bucket! We haven’t seen a surge in DNS traffic since 02:20pm PST, so things are in the clear!

Update: Unfortunately, we are still being attacked sporadically even after blocking this virus and are still investigating the issue. We are not the only ones being affected by this. Time Warner cable is also suffering from this as well:

»arstechnica.com/security/news/20···vice.ars

We’re doing all that we can to resolve this issue, but since it’s out of our control there’s only so much we can do.


Smith6612
Premium,MVM
join:2008-02-01
North Tonawanda, NY
kudos:21

Re: dreamhost webhosting affected too!

Dreamhost saying it's a trojan is probably right on the ball, if even Time Warner is having issues with their DNS servers. I haven't seen Verizon's servers get flaky (yes I use ISP DNS), but hope this clears up for everyone soon.

warbman

@rr.com

Attack is Justified

Time Warner Executives are subverting visa laws by allowing foreign operatives to displace American workers using WebX. WebX allows foreign operatives to work from another nation and replace most any job in their organization without conforming to Visa laws.

Thus Executives and the CEO is able to enrich themselves while putting another American Family on the street. They are quite calculated in their search for profits and know no mercy or social responsibility.

I support the hacker attack on Time Warner Executives because of their unscrupulous and unconventional war tactics that they wage on American employees.

I hope the attacks intensify because it is the only way to help American families feed their children. We need the jobs here on American soil. When the Executives stop waging unconventional warfare on their employees I expect the attacks to diminish.

If TW CEO’s and Executives continue to wage unconventional warfare against their employees then I will cancel my service.

maartena
Elmo
Premium
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA
kudos:1
Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
·DIRECTV
said by warbman :

Time Warner Executives are subverting visa laws by allowing foreign operatives to displace American workers using WebX. WebX allows foreign operatives to work from another nation and replace most any job in their organization without conforming to Visa laws.
So is the U.S. Government. Thanks to Bush's little wars they are using AMERICAN TAX DOLLARS, to contract work for the U.S. military to foreigners. This includes but is not limited to the building/demolishing of military camps, shipping of military supplies to/from Iraq, production of VITAL military hardware, etc.

As a matter of fact, Senators McCain, Brownback and Roberts were supporters of, and pushed for an amendmend that would change a law that required "buy american" for the government. And sure enough it passed in 2003.

Fast forward 6 years later, and we are outsourcing our wars, and losing them.

DNSmasq

@rr.com

Use DNSmasq to shotgun your request to multiple servers

I took somebodies advice a ways back and setup my Linksys router with DDWRT, then did some extended configuration of DNSmasq. Now my router forward my DNS requests to multiple DNS servers from multiple providers at once and uses the quickest reply.

Just put this in to your DNSmasq options box and reset your modem.
## Extended DNS setup
all-servers
domain-needed
filterwin2k
bogus-priv
stop-dns-rebind

# Kill DNS redirection by TWC for unknown domains
bogus-nxdomain=208.67.219.132

# Local DNS GUI option enabled = Use ISP DNS servers received through DHCP in addition to DNS servers below.

## Additional DNS servers
# Level3 AnyCast DNS servers
server=209.244.0.3
server=4.2.2.2

# Speakeasy DNS servers
server=64.81.45.2
server=64.81.79.2

# OpenDNS AnyCast DNS servers
server=208.67.222.222
server=208.67.220.220

DNSmasq

@rr.com

Re: Use DNSmasq to shotgun your request to multiple servers

Actually the following lines:
# Kill DNS redirection by TWC for unknown domains
bogus-nxdomain=208.67.219.132


Should read:
# Kill DNS redirection by OpenDNS for unknown domains
bogus-nxdomain=208.67.219.132
sysghost
Premium
join:2001-02-11
Hernando, MS

Re: Use DNSmasq to shotgun your request to multiple servers

Never saw this in any of the dd-wrt forums. Thanks.

Ikyuao

join:2007-02-26
Wichita, KS
Reviews:
·Cox HSI

Use iptables firewall

Use iptables of linux network firewall is necessary to drop any attacker ip addresses with recent module in a hole to prevent attacker from attacking an internal services running.
--
Professional Linux environmental blows microsoft windows out of the water.

rv65
Ban Cat Declawing
Premium
join:2008-08-02
USA!!!!
kudos:1

Affecting San Diego

I guess it's affecting San Diego since it's also having problems. Using 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 solves that problem.

kams912

@rr.com

open dns

I don't have time to read everyone's post because I'm fucking with my internet connection... but I will say that I'm using open dns and have been for years now, but my internet connection with TWC has latency spikes up to 4999ms.

brad987

@rr.com

Re: open dns

I am with TimeWarner in SoCal,

while this last week on TimeWarner was very bad with every website timing out / failing to connect using their dns servers.
the only website I could get to was google ,using google seach and the google cache feature was the only way I can connect with other webpages on the internet.

thats how I found dslreports mention of timewarners problems and a possible solution by changing dns servers to open dns.

I just started using open dns yesterday, while things have gotten better, I still have difficulty connecting to websites. with 30% of my attempts still timing out. you may thing thats still crap but its actually just a little worse than timewarner over all of last year.

nmarshall

join:2008-02-19
Tujunga, CA

TWC Road Runner DNS is about twice as slow

Since this thread is about Time Warner I thought I'd try ns_bench to see how the DNS servers around here look. The first two are TWC Road Runner SoCal, the second two are OpenDNS, and the last ones are Level 3:

Nameserver          Response Time (ms)
                    min/avg/max/stdev/retries
 
66.75.160.63        64.00/65.60/68.00/1.36/0
66.75.160.64        64.00/64.80/66.00/0.75/0
208.67.222.222      29.00/31.80/38.00/3.19/0
208.67.220.220      23.00/24.00/25.00/0.63/0
4.2.2.1             14.00/15.80/18.00/1.47/0
4.2.2.2             15.00/16.40/21.00/2.33/0
4.2.2.3             14.00/15.00/18.00/1.55/0
4.2.2.4             13.00/14.60/16.00/1.20/0
4.2.2.5             12.00/14.20/16.00/1.47/0
4.2.2.6             13.00/15.60/18.00/1.62/0
 

So... yes the RR DNS servers are comparably slow in South California. I'm using OpenDNS but I'll have to try Level 3.

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